Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Today we participated in the Liturgy at the Franciscan Friary. The homily made the connection between God the Mother and Mary as a reflection of the feminine. The liturgy featured prayers in Gaelic as well as Celtic music.

I prayed for women priests in Ireland at Mary's altar in the Franciscan Priory.

See clip below.

At the Fleadh, there was music everywhere on the street, children were playing instruments and dancing. It was a joy to be part of the energy of a huge throng of people celebrating their Irish heritage. See my facebook page for delightful music videos.

Today I received several calls from media, including BBC. We were invited to celebrate liturgy in Northern Ireland with Pat Buckely and his community on the Antrim coast, and heard from another woman who is interested in discerning a vocation to priesthood.

Speaking of the five women seeking ordination, Bishop Meehan told The Irish Times they “already have theology degrees and diplomas in spirituality”.

A Mass celebrated by Bishop Meehan, in a community centre on Dublin’s South Circular, was attended by “35 to 40” people earlier this month, while the delegation met a similar number more recently in Drogheda.

They have also visited Glenstal Abbey at Murroe, Co Limerick, where they met former Abbot Mark Patrick Hederman and Nóirín Ní Riain who was ordained Rev Nóirín Ní Riain, minister in the One Spirit Inter Faith Seminary Foundation, last month. The foundation embraces “the universal truth at the heart of all spiritual traditions”. Ms Ní Riain has a doctorate in theology.

Bishop Meehan said she had also met Limerick parish priest Fr Roy Donovanwho last week called for the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood and objected to the introduction of a male-only permanent diaconate in his Cashel Archdiocese before completion of a report by the papal commission on women deacons.

The meeting with Fr Donovan was “very open” she said, and he had put her in contact with a woman who believes she too has a vocation.

Pittsburgh ordination

Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan was raised to the episcopacy in 2009 at Santa Barbara, California, after ordination to the Catholic priesthood at Pittsburgh in 2006.

In 2007, she and fellow women priests were excommunicated by Pope Benedict. He decreed that anyone “who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive a sacred order” was automatically excommunicated. However, this decree has been rejected by the ARCWP.

In North America, there were about 250 Catholic women priests and 11 women bishops, Bishop Meehan said. Their ordinations were valid “because of our apostolic succession within the Roman Catholic Church”, she said.

This is so because “the principal consecrating Roman Catholic male bishop who ordained our first women bishops is a bishop with apostolic succession within the Roman Catholic Church in communion with the Pope. Therefore, our bishops validly ordain deacons, priests and bishops.”

As well as in the US and Canada, the ARCWP has members in Latin Americaand, increasingly, in the rest of the world.

Equality

They seek equality for women in the church at all levels, including at decision-making and ordination levels, and prepare and ordain qualified women (and men) to serve as Catholic priests. Theirs is “a renewal movement” within the church which aims at “full equality for all within” as “a matter of justice and faithfulness to the Gospel”, she said.

Bishop Meehan points out that their model of church “is exactly the opposite” of the current Roman model. For instance, “our bishops have absolutely no authority apart from ordaining [others to priesthood/episcopacy]. It’s like the monastic model,” she said.

She and other members of her delegation are back in Ireland (she has been a regular visitor over the years) “for the month of August” and hope to encourage other women towards ordination while here. They will be “celebrating liturgies and meeting with women’s groups”.

They would also “love a dialogue with the bishops” in Ireland and believe there is “a new spirit in the church” since the election of Pope Francis in 2013. They feel “in harmony with a lot of what Pope Francis is saying”.

Recently, two Vatican officials met ARCWP members in Rome and all attended Mass together, she said.

Women who believe they have a vocation to the priesthood can contact Bishop Meehan at 001- 703-505-0004, sofiabmm@aol.com and www.arcwp.org.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Bridget Mary's Response to Cardinal Marx. Yes, to women in leadership positions with decision making authority, but,until women are equals at the altar with equal rites and equal rights, the vision of Jesus in the Gospels of inclusiveness and spiritual equality will not become a reality in the Catholic Church. The mission of the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests is to lead the church into the full equality of women in a renewed priestly ministry in the community of equals with all the baptized. www.arcwp.org

"We would be mad not to use women's talents. In fact, it would be downright foolish," Cardinal Reinhard Marx, one of Pope Francis' top advisors, recently said at a mentoring program for women in his Munich archdiocese...

He said the fact that only men can be ordained as Catholic priests, is "certainly not helping the Church come across as a pioneer of equal rights".

"But that does not mean only men rule the Church," the cardinal insisted. "